Baroness Ashton of Upholland: The Access to Information Central Clearing House has received over 2,800 referrals since the implementation of the Freedom of Information Act. In excess of 450 of these have been referred at internal review stage, while just over 60 are cases that have been appealed to the Information Commissioner's Office.
	The time taken to process FoI requests at any stage is not monitored or recorded by the clearing house and it is therefore unable reasonably to estimate the average time taken in this process.
	The role of clearing house is to advise on the appropriate application of the FoI Act to those requests referred to it. It does not, however, have the final responsibility in responding to FoI requests, either to the applicant or the Information Commissioners Office. It is therefore not possible to say how many of those cases are currently pending. However, statistics on the performance of Central Government on handling FoI requests are collated and published by DCA and can be found on its website at www.foi.gov.uk/implement.htm#foistats.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: The following is a breakdown of the expenditure the Prison Service incurred following Ms Carol Lingard's complaints of constructive dismissal and victimisation to an Employment Tribunal.
	
		
			  Amount 
			 Payments made to the claimant pursuant to the   employment tribunal's remedies judgment on 30 June 2005 
			   
			 Basic award £3,915.00 
			 Injury to feelings award £3,000.00' 
			 Compensatory award (net) £367,136.76 
			 Claimant's legal costs and counsel's fees £97,912.50 
			 Total payments to claimant £471,964.26 
			   
			 Prison Service's Legal costs  
			 Respondent's legal costs, counsel's fees and disbursements £126,057.38 
			 Total cost to Respondent £598,021.64